blinovitch_lmt_doctor_who_databasefandomcom-20200215-history
The Poison Sky (TV story)
The Poison Sky 'is the fifth episode of the fourth series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Helen Raynor, directed by Douglas Mackinnon and featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones. Overview To be added Synopsis The Doctor and UNIT are run around in strategic circles trying to figure out how to stop the Sontarans and prevent the Earth from being choked by relentless exhaust fumes, all the while trying to discern whether there is an agent of the Sontarans having infiltrated UNIT and is working inside sabotage on the Sontaran's behalf. Meanwhile, Donna and the TARDIS have been procured by the Sontarans and Donna is forced to leave the safety of the ship and go in search of a way to return, while also avoiding being discovered by the Sontarans. Plot The Doctor keeps working at Donna's deadlocked car to try and free Wilf before he is suffocated by the fumes inside the vehicle. To their surprise, Sylvia comes out with a fire axe and smashes the windscreen, freeing Wilf and letting the fumes out. Meanwhile, at the ATMOS factory, Colonel Mace orders the vehicles put outside and the factory sealed up while his subordinate, Captain Price, monitors the situation. Unbeknowst to them, "Martha" uses the real Martha's memories to log into the UNIT system with her Level 1 clearance and hacks into the NATO defense system. While Sylvia gets Wilf back into the house to wait out the worst, the Doctor and Donna go back to the ATMOS factory with Jenkins. "Martha" sends a signal up to the Sontarans connecting them to the UNIT secure mainframe. Receiving the signal, General Staal orders Commander Skorr to oversee a siege of the factory to keep her cover. Down on the surface, the public are told to stay away from all cars and stay indoors. The Doctor and Donna return to the factory and "Martha" finally informs Mace about the Sontarans and he orders a code red. The Doctor sends Donna back to the TARDIS while he joins Mace in the UNIT carrier and tells him not to engage the Sontarans; he then tell him that he plans to get onto their ship using the TARDIS. However, "Martha" overhears this and signals Harris and Gray to attach teleport caps to it and send it to the Sontaran ship. Donna looks outside of the TARDIS after Rattigan leaves to learn that she is stuck on the Sontaran warship. The Doctor finds the TARDIS missing from the alleyway and starts to get suspicious of "Martha" when she mentions not having contacted her family yet and thus doesn't tell her that Donna was in the TARDIS when it was teleported. On the outskirts of London, Rattigan's students look at the smog-enveloped city and Rattigan decides it's time to tell them his true intention. Returning to UNIT operations, they start getting reports of the gas increasing in intensity. The Doctor warns Mace not to launch a missile strike at the fleet as it would have no effect. He instead contacts the ship with a video link and addresses Staal. The general refuses to give any indication of his true plan to the Doctor but he, knowing that the video link is also active inside the TARDIS, discreetly tells Donna to make a call before the Sontarans cut the transmission. At his Academy, Rattigan tells his students that he'd been preparing them for a relocation to another planet for the human race to start again. However, his students are disgusted and refuse to have any further involvement with him. He tries holding a gun on them but they still walk out and he has a tantrum. While the news reports persist worldwide, Donna calls her family from the TARDIS and promises that everything will turn out okay before hanging up and crying. To the Doctor's chagrin, Colonel Mace orders a strike on the Sontaran fleet which, as the countdown reaches zero, cuts out on account of "Martha's" intervention. The Sontarans teleport inside the factory through the clone chamber to engage the soldiers. On Mace's instruction, UNIT faces the incoming squads head-on but their weapons are rendered useless by their cordolaine signal and all are killed, including Jenkins. Angered that Mace got those men killed by ignoring his warning, the Doctor furious demands he pulls the rest of the men back and Mace complies. The UNIT soldiers vacate the factory, maintaining fatalities while the Sontarans take control. Captain Price manages to restore the missile launch grid but "Martha" immediately shuts it back down again. Rattigan returns to the Sontaran ship and tells him of his failure to convince his students, but Staal informs him that they never planned to take him anywhere and they would have just gunned down his students as soon as they arrived. Rattigan teleports back to the surface before they can kill him and the Sontarans sever the teleport links. While Mace, again against the Doctor's advisement, goes to find a way of confronting the Sontarans while counteracting their cordolaine signal, the Doctor calls Donna in the TARDIS and tells her that she needs to leave the ship and re-establish the teleport link to Earth. Taking a mallet from the TARDIS and downing the Sontaran guard, Donna is forced to hide from a squad of Sontarans that pass through the ship while Mace calls everybody outside for a demonstration of the new bullets which wouldn't be affected by the cordolaine signal. He also calls down the Valiant to clear away the worst of the smoke surrounding the factory using it's rotors, giving his men a clear shot to blow their way into the factory and take on the Sontarans. UNIT swarms the factory while the Doctor and "Martha" branch off when he detects nearby alien technology. Finding the clone chamber, the Doctor finds the real Martha unconscious while the clone holds him at gunpoint. He reveals he's known about her right from the start and uses Martha's memories to distract her while he breaks the connection between her and the machine. The clone drops to her knees, dying while the real Martha wakes up. Outside, Mace encounters Skorr and guns him down. As she dies, the clone reveals that the gas is really clone feed, suitable for converting the Earth into a clone world for creating billions of new Sontaran soldiers. On the ship, Donna reestablishes the teleport link and the Doctor beams her and the TARDIS back down just as she's discovered by the Sontarans. Using the pod, the Doctor brings both Donna and Martha to the Rattigan Academy. While the smog continues to worsen and the Sontarans look down at the choking world, the Doctor constructs an atmospheric converter using Rattigan's technology and drags it outside, realising that the Sontarans wanted to hold off the missiles to keep the explosions from igniting the gas. Taking it outside, the Doctor launches a flame into the sky and ignites the clone feed, setting the entire sky ablaze. The fire in the clouds spreads across the planet like wildfire, sapping all of the excess gas and clearing the sky of the smog. While the population and UNIT celebrate, the Doctor reconfigures the converter for Sontaran air, says a quick farewell to Martha and Donna and teleports himself to their ship with an ultimatum: they leave or be destroyed. Staal refuses to surrender while the Doctor is apprehensive to destroy them. Below, Rattigan rewires the teleport pod and sends himself to the ship, swapping places with the Doctor, who returns to Earth and destroys the Sontarans as revenge for betraying him. A little while later, ATMOS is removed from all cars and the population takes to walking for a period. Sylvia returns home as Donna is about to return to the TARDIS; she says goodbye to Wilf and promises to come back safe. In the TARDIS, the Doctor offers Martha another chance to travel with him and Donna but she declines, having loved her time with him but acknowledges she has other responsibilities now. However, as she heads out, the doors slam shut and the engines start up without the Doctor having done anything. Martha orders him to take her home, but the ship is on an out-of-control course to an unknown destination. Cast * The Doctor - David Tennant * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate * Martha Jones - Freema Agyeman * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper * Wilfred Mott - Bernard Cribbins * Sylvia Noble - Jacqueline King * Luke Rattigan - Ryan Sampson * Colonel Mace - Rupert Holliday Evans * General Staal - Christopher Ryan * Commander Skorr - Dan Starkey * Private Harris - Clive Standen * Private Gray - Wesley Theobald * Ross Jenkins - Christian Cooke * Female Student - Meryl Fernandes * Male Student - Leeshon Alexander * Captain Price - Bridget Hodgson * Herself - Kirsty Wark * US Newsreader - Lachele Carl Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Poison Sky'' page on '''Doctor Who Website